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Saturday, May 21, 2022 - 20:35
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 230 – The Long History of the Lavender Menace - transcript
(Originally aired 2022/05/21 - listen here)
The term “lavender menace” dates to 1969, when leaders in the National Organization for Women (the most prominent feminist organization in the USA at the time) took steps to distance itself from lesbian organizations and causes for fear that a close association of lesbians and feminists in the popular imagination would undermine feminist goals. The phrase was taken up as a rallying cry the next year by an informal group of lesbian feminists at the Second Congress to Unite Women, and their activism and outreach reversed the official position of the National Organization for Women to being inclusive of lesbian concerns.
But the association of female same-sex desire and feminist activism – and anxieties about that association both inside feminist circles and from anti-feminist agitators – dates to much earlier than the second-wave feminist movement of the 60s. So this episode takes a historic tour through that association within Western culture.
Definitions and Caveats
To begin with some caveats, it is not always the case that anxieties about feminism raised the specter of lesbian inclinations. And it isn’t an automatic given that women with same-sex desires will adopt feminist philosophies. And I should note here that, in this episode (as I often do), I’m going to use a variety of terms for female same-sex erotics—including the word “lesbian”—without intending a precise modern definition and without implying the use of that word in the era in question. Sometimes it’s just a matter of making the script interesting and elegant to read.
Cultural beliefs about gender and sexuality affect the types of connections people will make. It has been a repeating motif that anti-feminists view arguments for gender equality as an act of transing gender. In the words of Simone de Beauvoir, “Man is defined as a human being and woman as a female – whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male." In various different forms at different times, people have thought that if women engaged in behaviors and activities and had rights that were considered to be masculine, it would turn them into men, either psychologically or—in some eras—physiologically. Or, if not into men, then into not-women. This is a different motif than the idea that feminism turns women into lesbians, but the two have overlapping territory due to certain models of sexuality, in which desire for women is viewed as an inherently masculine trait and indicates masculinity in the person who experiences it.
Similarly, it might seem like a given that women who desire women, and who are less invested in the normative expectations of heterosexual marriage, would be motivated to support equal legal and economic rights for women. But this assumption overlooks the importance of class and other types of identities, which may over-ride any sense of sisterly solidarity. Individual women—and Anne Lister in the early 19th century is a salient example here—sometimes thought of themselves as unique individuals apart from the general mass of womankind, and they might believe themselves, as individuals, as worthy of rights equal to those given to men while also believing that most women were not worthy of them. Similarly, some people assigned female who desired women perceived their desire for the rights and freedoms available to men as stemming from an inherent masculine identity that also motivated their sexual desires. As they did not identify with the category of “woman”, they might not feel aligned with the struggle for rights for women, and could be, in some cases, fairly misogynistic in their positions.
In order for anxiety about feminism leading to lesbianism to arise, it’s necessary for a society to have the concept of “the lesbian as a type of person” (to use Nan Alamilla Boyd’s phrase). This doesn’t require that the word “lesbian” be in use, or to have a concept of sexual orientation as a type of personal identity. It only requires that women’s same-sex desire be recognized as a habit, a propensity of taste, or a personality type. That recognition has existed in a wider swath of time and geography than the social constructionists might have us believe. But it’s also the case that without a public and recognized vocabulary for female same-sex desire, the accusations of lesbianism may surface in coded ways—as dog-whistles that may not be obvious to the modern audience.
Needless to say, in order for this equation of feminism with lesbianism to arise, it’s also necessary for a society to recognize a concept equivalent to feminism. Historians of feminism typically speak of the “first-wave” feminism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, focusing on voting and property rights, and “second-wave” feminism starting in the 1960s covering a wider range of social and legal inequities, with everything prior to those waves being labeled “proto-feminism”.
But in this episode I’m going to use a more general definition in which feminism consists of organized philosophical arguments for reducing the social and legal barriers to women’s participation in the public social sphere, whether in terms of access to education and an intellectual life, of participation in the workforce and control over the products of their labor, of having a role in government, of the right to a legal identity that was not dependent on a male relative, or addressing a gendered double-standard with regard to sexual behavior and marriage rights. Not all people who embraced some feminist aims aspired to the complete equality of the genders—some feminists were peculiarly limited in the types of changes they wanted to see and the arguments they expressed. But I think it’s reasonable for the current purpose to define feminism in terms of a desire to reduce the inequality of the genders.
At the same time, not all cases of individual women claiming or arguing for male-coded rights and freedoms can reasonably be called feminist. As noted above, some such women considered themselves to be special cases and were content for the majority of women to remain in their traditional roles. Or they argued only for the rights of certain subsets of women to have rights, excluding others on the basis of class, race, religion, or other factors. Those loyalties to the status quo didn’t protect them from the same attacks and push-back faced by women who did have broader aims.
Motivations
Historian Valerie Traub discusses a phenomenon she calls “cycles of salience” where recurring co-existing motifs across time give us periodic views of phenomena that appear similar but are not directly related except through their superficial manifestations. I view this periodic recurrence of the “lavender menace” motif as one of these cycles of salience. Eras of feminist agitation give rise to a variety of types of social anxiety. Depending on other factors in society relating to sexuality, one of the forms that anxiety may take is concern about female same-sex relations. But here, rather than using “same-sex relations” as a euphemism for lesbian sex, I mean it in the literal sense: relationships between women.
Two different types of anxiety contribute to the lavender menace motif. The older type, as mentioned previously, is an anxiety that if women behave in ways labeled masculine, it will literally turn them into men, or at least will make them less female. This might take the form of a belief that male-coded activity will hinder female fertility, or it might operate more on a psychological level, making them less “feminine” in terms of the social ideal.
But the other theme is that equality of the genders will make men irrelevant to women. If women were no longer dependent on men for economic stability, to act for them in legal matters, to protect them from threats, or any of the other roles that men were expected to fulfill, then women would have no need for men at all, including for sexual gratification. If one examines the underlying logic of this anxiety, it isn’t very flattering to men. But for that matter, feminist rhetoric in some ages argued that marriage was a form of involuntary servitude with no guarantee of any return, so perhaps men’s fears were well founded.
Waves of Feminism
Proto-feminist ideas in the Middle Ages tended to focus on moral and philosophical issues, such as the feminization of Original Sin. Arguments for women’s moral equality, made by authors such as Christine de Pizan in The City of Ladies, focused on begging for men’s good will and recognition of women’s worth, but rarely challenged the economic status quo in which women’s labor was less valued. Questions of political equality were largely not relevant under systems based on monarchy and aristocratic rule. Women arguing for better education and an equal respect as moral beings might be considered undesirably masculine in nature, but the lack of a coherent concept of “lesbians as a type of person” meant that lesbianism did not form part of the equation at this time.
This general pattern held through the Renaissance. A wider interest in education and learning inspired some women to argue that women should have the same educational opportunities as men, but in general those opportunities were enjoyed only by the elite. As a broad generalization, many people recognized that some women could aspire to the same accomplishments as men, but there was a sense that this was only possible for women who were “masculine” to some degree to start with. But we can see glimpses of the themes that prepared the ground for a lavender menace motif. Feminist treatises (such as Jane Anger’s 1589 Protection for Women or Moderata Fonte’s 1600 treatise The Worth of Women) argue from the premise that women’s social power can only derive from separating themselves from men and focusing their resources in support of other women. Other authors who took a “women first” stand included Lady Mary Chudleigh, Marie de Romieu, and a semi-anonymous group of six London maidservants who published an open letter in 1567 appealing to their female employers to make common cause as women in support of their common interests such as resistance to male sexual predation.
These texts highlight the idea of a homosocial economy of women that allows for equality in relationships that can stand against patriarchal structures. This sort of equality was not possible between women and men. The specific activities of constructing these homosocial bonds point out the inequality of male-male friendships and female-female ones: men’s same-sex friendships act within and support patriarchy while women’s same-sex friendships act to subvert and negate its power. For women to create non-marital bonds outside the family was an inherent act of challenge to the status quo which expected women’s loyalties to be to husband, household, and extended family in that order.
The individual elements were starting to be present for a lavender menace, but they didn’t align quite yet. Sexual desire between women was recognized as a possible “personal taste,” but people weren’t making a connection between sexuality and philosophical positions on gender. Even in England’s “gender panic” of the early 17th century, the concerns about masculine women and effeminate men were not seen as relating to same-sex desire, but to gender identity.
But in the later 17th century we see the first recognizable iteration of the lavender menace motif.
Feminist thought was exploring topics like social and legal disparities in marriage, and the logical extension of humanist and neo-platonic philosophies that “the soul has no gender”—a philosophy that tripped over social beliefs about the inherent sexualization of male-female interactions. New non-conformist religious movements, such as the Quakers, embraced a fairly radical equality of the sexes. Poets like Katherine Philips were making the connections between philosophies valuing the equality of women and a personal erotic connection with specific women. Advocates for women’s education like Mary Astell argued that bonds between women were an essential bulwark against patriarchal barriers and that marriage was a hindrance to equality. Authors like Aphra Behn, Margaret Cavendish, and Delarivier Manley imagined woman-only societies and woman-centered relationships, driven by similar philosophies, that included a more overt eroticism—although they had a wide range of critical positions on the intersection.
And now the necessary components for a lavender menace fall into place. Susan Lanser argues that, in the later part of the 17th century, this conceptual shift in the use of intimate friendship structures among women to support their struggles for autonomy and authority collided with emerging recognition of the erotic possibilities between women. This “sapphic” consciousness (encompassing both private and public expressions of same-sex desire) acted to dismantle the logic of patriarchy and thus formed the basis for the emergence of modern feminism.
But increasing public visibility of this sapphic consciousness was accompanied by the increasing use of derogatory imagery of lesbianism to undermine women perceived as challenging male authority. We see this, for example, in the accusations of lesbianism directed at powerful women in the circle of Queen Anne of England. The satiric version of the tribade or fricatrice no longer represented a trans-masculine appropriation of the male role, but was now depicted as rejecting men entirely, with a goal of establishing exclusively female spaces that embraced lesbian erotics.
The attribution of lesbian desire to women who promoted—or simply adhered to—feminist ideals created (in Lanser’s analysis) a social divergence between those who deflected suspicion behind the rhetoric of idealized platonic relations—a rhetoric that would eventually give rise to the motif of romantic friendship—and those who embraced a more overt eroticism and saw their reputations and legacies get sidetracked and categorized as libertinism and satire. As it were, a divergence between “respectable” feminists and radical sexual outlaws.
This motif rises again a century later, in the last quarter of the 18th century. Women who took seriously the ideals of the Enlightenment challenged society to extend those ideals to women. The female-led and nominally egalitarian atmosphere of the salon in France and England became an incubator for new strains of feminist thought. Female philosophers in revolutionary France took advantage of the atmosphere of change to push for true legal and social equality. English social reformers like Mary Wollstonecraft set forth detailed critiques and arguments for women’s rights.
This time the backlash came in two flavors: feminists are either bitter, sexually-frustrated old maids, or they are lesbians. Although the “bitter old maid” motif is another one the recurs across history, we’re only concerned at the moment with the second motif. With roots in revolutionary France, there is a growing motif of tribades not as isolated individuals or couples, but as creating voluntary communities and secret societies. The sensational and pornographic depictions of the Anandrine Society (there’s a prior podcast on this topic) braided together the image of collectives of women rejecting male supremacy, discarding men as unnecessary, and enthusiastically enjoying lesbian sex.
Cautionary novels in England promoted the stereotypical feminist couple: the pedantic intellectual bluestocking, partnered with the mannish Amazonian sportswoman, reflecting the two dire fates that awaited women who rejected domesticity. This, despite the fact that the actual bluestockings tended to be relatively conservative and conventional in their aspirations for women.
Commentary on female intimacy became increasingly satiric, projecting anxieties about the irrelevance of men onto an exaggeratedly decadent elite, in order to elevate middle-class domestic femininity. The reasonable ideals of female equality in the Age of Enlightenment were rejected by male philosophers as extremist and the result of the excesses of female intimacy.
The sentiment in post-revolutionary France against secret societies of all kinds helped paint feminist and separatist organizations in general as suspiciously sapphic. This, in turn, pushed upper class and intellectual feminists into an emphasis on anti-eroticism in relations between women, seen for example in the work of Wollstonecraft and the rise of the motif of "romantic friendship" among upper class women. The portrayal of sapphic eroticism then shifted toward lower class women, framed as monstrous, and increasingly treated as criminal.
These are the fracture lines in the wake of the era of revolutions that proved a set-back to even modest feminist goals. Conventional domestic morality became identified with the political health of the state. The rejection of marriage and childbearing in favor of personal fulfilment came to be viewed as a form of treason. Those who had aligned calls for women’s equality with calls for sexual freedom, such as Wollstonecraft, were savaged in the public press as immoral. And those women in romantic couples—whether sexual or not—who succeeded in achieving an independent household together must have felt a certain amount of pressure not to attract similar attention by raising the feminist standard.
But once more the cycle sowed the seeds of its revival. The cult of female domesticity, the ideal of “separate spheres” for men and women, the elevation of sentiment as a virtue, all of which had the surface goal of keeping women out of male-coded roles, had as a side-effect the strengthening of social bonds between women. Romantic friendships and gender-segregated educational institutions became the building blocks of what would eventually become “first wave feminism”.
Romantic friendship – as the “respectable” face of female same-sex desire – was never quite as uncritically embraced as the simple version of history would have us think. (Though neither was it universally the “yeah, sure they’re just good friends” cover story that wishful thinking suggests.) And in the tension across the 19th century between the approved and hazardous flavors of female intimate friendship, we see the framework for “lavender menace” battle lines, once first-wave feminists start making gains toward the end of the century.
As Lisa Moore lays out in her article “Something More Tender Still than Friendship,” the depiction of non-sexual romantic friendships in both fiction and non-fiction of the 19th century – rather than being either an accurate description of women’s relationships, or even an unquestioned fiction – was deployed as a shield against the specter of lesbianism. In order to maintain and protect the illusion of white middle-class heterosexual domestic purity, the ideal of romantic friendship was defined in opposition to “dangerous female friendships” or racialized models of sexually deviant women.
The power of this illusion became even more important as women began achieving some of the long-elusive goals of feminism, especially the ability to earn a living apart from the patriarchal household or heterosexual marriage. This ability created the freedom for female intimate friends to set up domestic partnerships together in numbers sufficient that the rest of society took note. Perhaps men were becoming irrelevant to women’s lives?
A common theme in the personal correspondence of later 19th century women with professional or intellectual aspirations was the impossibility of finding support for those aspirations within conventional marriage. This meant that such women—having built their most solid and long-lasting personal connections in a gender-segregated society—turned to other women for emotional, psychological, and financial support. And, due to the barriers they faced, they turned to feminist philosophy to express their frustrations and envision a better future.
Some of the social factors that bolstered first-wave feminism were byproducts of a specific historical era. The increasing industrialization of the economy affected women’s ability to support themselves, as small private businesses were forced out of the market by large-scale industries that were highly sex-segregated in employment. Related to this was the focus among middle- and upper-class social reformers on bettering the position of less fortunate women and creating wider opportunities for them. This created a context for organized institutions whose goals required finding successful strategies for social and political change. And once established, they identified many changes they wanted to work toward. Organizations to promote women’s suffrage emerged in the USA, England, and France, although they had a long struggle to success.
Demographics were another key driver of feminism in the late 19th century. Women significantly outnumbered men in both Europe and America either generally (in part due to wars) or locally (due to the differential migration of men to industrial centers and to feed colonial expansion). This meant that many women who had been socialized to rely on marriage as a life path now found themselves needing to be self-supporting and yet cut off both from many of the traditional jobs for women (that had disappeared) and from the better-paying jobs created by the new economy.
Middle-class women began expanding their presence in intellectual and clerical work, such as teaching and office work, and began agitating for equal pay in workplaces where they might find themselves earning one half to one tenth that of a man doing the same work. At the same time, we see the rise of what now are termed “pink collar” professions--jobs that were opened to women specifically because women had been socialized to accept limited working conditions for poor pay. At a more restricted level, women began demanding access to, and recognition at, professional careers such as medicine and academia.
In the mid 19th century, ideas about women’s education that had been largely intellectual exercises in previous centuries began to be put into practice. Higher education became more generally open to women (though sometimes it was necessary to create entire new institutions to do so, such as Mt. Holyoke College in the USA). By the late 19th century, one third of college students in the USA were women and most major European countries had at least some colleges that admitted women. And the vast majority of these female students were in institutions with largely female faculty.
When one surveys the women who did pursue advanced and professional studies, the vast majority never married. Cause and effect were tangled: a married woman would have less freedom to pursue such interests, as well as being subject to the time demands of motherhood. But also, women who had such ambitions may have recognized that marriage would be a distraction and roadblock.
Who did they turn to? The close, supportive, long-term relationships they already had with other women. Historical studies of the life-patterns of early first-wave feminists identify some clear prototypes: an only or oldest child whose father was supportive of her education and was the primary parental bond, and often a sense from the woman that she was serving as a substitute for the son her father would have preferred.
And here we trip over the groundwork for that generation’s “lavender menace.” This model for the “New Woman” matches fairly closely the stereotype later identified by psychoanalysts as a “cause” of lesbianism. In her study of this era, historian Lillian Faderman speculates on cause and effect. Was it that women who were attracted to other women responded more strongly to the opportunities of this sort of upbringing? Or did such an upbringing make the rejection of marriage and the expression of desire for women more attractive? Faderman notes, “Whether, as an independent, ambitious nineteenth-century woman, she began as a lesbian or as a feminist, it was very possible that she would end as both.”
At the same time, the emergence—particularly in France—of women with a public identity that can solidly be labeled “lesbian,” and the greater publication of sexually explicit material involving female couples, meant that the deniability of lesbianism was being eroded. It became less possible for the average person to be ignorant of lesbian possibilities, and therefore accusations of lesbianism became viewed as more plausible.
This is the context in which the illusory ideal of platonic romantic friendship begins to fray at the edges. These independent “new women” were passing by the dubious attractions of heterosexual marriage and establishing stable domestic partnerships that were not simply recognized as a substitute for marriage, but were overtly labeled things like “Boston marriage” or “Wellesley marriage.” Once the word “marriage” is used, it becomes more difficult to ignore the erotic potential of such relationships.
The later 19th and early 20th century are full of the names of such couples among female professionals and intellectuals. The feminist movement was teeming with them. And with backlash against the growing success of that movement we begin to regularly see charges of “mannishness” and sexual impropriety. Satire and caricature were major tools of the backlash, depicting independent and feminist women as aggressive, ugly man-haters. Schoolgirl friendships that had been the social foundation of many a feminist power couple became pathologized even by those same movement leaders. Some feminists tried to rework the accusations of “mannishness,” depicting a type of affirmative female masculinity that marginalized same-sex sexuality. Others seized on a type of respectability politics that tied the feminist movement to moralizing goals such as the prohibition of alcohol, or campaigns against pornography. Ah yes, the sex wars. Is this starting to sound familiar?
Conclusion
In summary, feminism and female same-sex desire have been part of a long, tangled dance. The cycles that I’ve depicted here are, perhaps, not as clear-cut and distinct as I’ve made them seem. Feminism may have waves, but the ocean has always been present underneath. Reactionary responses to accusations of lesbianism are all the more ironic given how solidly each feminist wave has been rooted in social and emotional bonds between women—including between pairs of women whose bond encompassed romance and sometimes sexuality. And attempts to distance feminist movements from those accusations have always failed, not simply because there were lesbians present, but because the problem was never the lesbians but the stigma on lesbianism. To be aware of the historic pattern is the first step to breaking the cycle. The lavender menace has never been a menace to feminism but to the illusion that you can engage in revolution and remain respectable.
Show Notes
In this episode we talk about:
- The changing focus of feminist activism across the centuries
- Different ways in which feminism was attacked
- The rationale behind accusing feminists of lesbianism
- Cycles of activism and backlash
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
- Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
- Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
- RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
- Twitter: @LesbianMotif
- Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
- The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon
Links to Heather Online
- Website: http://alpennia.com
- Email: Heather Rose Jones
- Twitter: @heatherosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
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Tuesday, May 17, 2022 - 20:06
This is the second of the articles that drove me to track down this collection (though, as it happens, I suspect the last two articles will also be of interest). Andreadis has written on this theme before and you can see the concept develop accross several publications. (But, of course, I'm not reading them in the order they were produced, so I get some of the ideas out of order.) While it's dangerous to try to understand historic attitudes by analogy to modern ones, it might be useful to consider the wide range of approaches to "respectability" within modern LGBTQ communities. People's public presentation doesn't necessarily align with their personal identity. People can disagrwee about the best way to create meaningful art while sharing similar inspirations. Andreadis addresses the reasons why early modern discourse around lesbian sexuality might diverge into two contrasting camps, but those differences don't necessarily tell us anything about private behavior. I think it would be a mistake to posit that avoiding explicit sexual language in one's writing implies avoiding explicit sexual activity in one's bed. I like that Andreadis connects her analysis with Terry Castle's analysis (which I really do need to read and blog one of these days), and the ways in which the permitted public expressions of desire between women work to make it possible to doubt the fact of that desire. The combination of a public discourse of female same-sex desire and the dynamic shifts in how it was expressed and received are part of why I'm attracted to writing fiction in the later 17th century. It expands the options for how one's characters might think, speak, and behave around their desires and offers intriguing sources of conflict.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Andreadis, Harriette. 1999. “The Erotics of Female Friendship in Early Modern England” in Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women’s Alliances in Early Modern England edited by Susan Frye & Karen Robertson. Oxford University Press, New York. ISBN 0-19-511735-2
Andreadis, Harriette. “The Erotics of Female Friendship in Early Modern England”
[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]
This is the second of the articles that drove me to track down this collection (though, as it happens, I suspect the last two articles will also be of interest). Andreadis has written on this theme before and you can see the concept develop accross several publications. (But, of course, I'm not reading them in the order they were produced, so I get some of the ideas out of order.) While it's dangerous to try to understand historic attitudes by analogy to modern ones, it might be useful to consider the wide range of approaches to "respectability" within modern LGBTQ communities. People's public presentation doesn't necessarily align with their personal identity. People can disagrwee about the best way to create meaningful art while sharing similar inspirations. Andreadis addresses the reasons why early modern discourse around lesbian sexuality might diverge into two contrasting camps, but those differences don't necessarily tell us anything about private behavior. I think it would be a mistake to posit that avoiding explicit sexual language in one's writing implies avoiding explicit sexual activity in one's bed. I like that Andreadis connects her analysis with Terry Castle's analysis (which I really do need to read and blog one of these days), and the ways in which the permitted public expressions of desire between women work to make it possible to doubt the fact of that desire. The combination of a public discourse of female same-sex desire and the dynamic shifts in how it was expressed and received are part of why I'm attracted to writing fiction in the later 17th century. It expands the options for how one's characters might think, speak, and behave around their desires and offers intriguing sources of conflict.
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The focus of this article, in Andreadis’s words is “a class of women and behaviors described by their contemporaries in ways that coincide with our modern ‘lesbian’.” There is still much uncertainty within that description as to how these women and their society understood these concepts, and Andreadis’s thesis is that as such behaviors begin to be framed in public discourse as transgressive, women who engaged in the same behaviors but wished to be viewed as “respectable” developed a coded language to express sexual feelings in the language of female friendship – a shift that Andreadis labels “double discourse” as it parallels the more overtly transgressive language that was coming into use. [So, in essence, they developed a “closeted” language to deflect condemnation.]
Double discourse is particularly apparent in the poetic expression of female friendship, beginning with authors such as Aemelia Lanyer and Katherine Philips. This phenomenon partakes of a long tradition of making lesbian sexuality “undefinable” as explored, for example, in Terry Castle’s The Apparitional Lesbian. The ways in which female same-sex desire are expressed make that desire erasable, even as they protect the women who recorded these desires.
Andreadis discusses the resistance among historians to acknowledging female same-sex eroticism in England before 1600 despite an undeniable vocabulary for female same-sex activity, dating at least as early as the 16th century. This vocabulary occurred in medical and travel literature, for example. This unambiguous vocabulary, including terms such as tribade, fricatrice, and rubster identified a specific type of transgressive and stigmatized sexuality. When specific activities are indicated, it is rubbing the genitals together, or penetrative sex using an instrument or a (probably mythical) enlarged clitoris.
The treatment of sex between women undergoes complex shifts from a relatively matter of fact, if misogynistic, curiosity in the 16th century, to a more self-conscious and often prurient presentation in the 17th century. At that time, in addition to documentary contexts, allusions to sex between women are appearing in literary works, both by male authors and by those female authors willing to be viewed as unconventional. Mid-seventeenth century female authors who write of same-sex eroticism include Margaret Cavendish, Anne Killigrew, Aphra Behn, and Delarivier Manley. With the exception of Killagrew, these women were all considered scandalous to some degree. The question is open whether their reputations gave them the freedom to write on sexual matters, or whether their writing was the driver of their reputations.
In reaction to that intersection of infamy and using same-sex erotics as a literary subject, there appears to have been a shift (roughly following after the Restoration) by which women who wish to protect a respectable reputation developed a separate literary vocabulary for expressing same-sex desire. By using this vocabulary, they could distance themselves from the image of tribades and fricatrices.
What was the nature of this literary language? It included emotionally charged, erotic (but not sexual) imagery, including the assumption of largely homosocial lives (but ones unable to entirely avoid marriage and childbearing) and drawing on specific tropes and categories that were considered acceptable for women writers. These tropes included praise of patrons or social supporters, elegies for female friends, poems either celebrating or lamenting the dynamics of friendship, poems about women’s life stages, poems about reading and writing, and dedications on other authors works. Acceptable themes included meditation, philosophy, pastoral fantasy, and compliment – but the genres of political satire and explicit sexuality fell on the other side of the line. But when writing within these permitted themes and genres, erotically-charged sentiments could emerge.
Parallel shifts in society of the later at 17th century include the rise of professional women writers, increasing publication in English (rather than Latin), a greater focus on female education, the growth of the middle class and the ideals of domesticity, and greater sexual permissiveness and behavior.
Women writers such as Aemilia Lanyer and Katherine Philips often addressed their work specifically to a female audience. Philips organized a literary social circle celebrating female friendship, while writing strongly erotic poems for her favorites among that circle. Philips’ work be can be considered a model for the creation of a passionate discourse between women that lay outside the contemporary understanding of the sexual. This tradition continues in the work of Mary Chudleigh, Anne Finch, Jane Brereton, and the pseudonymous “Ephelia”.
Their work can be seen in contrast to the more explicitly sexual writings of Behn, Manley, Cavendish, and Killigrew. What is difficult to determine is whether the women in these two “movements” saw a commonality in their experiences and desires (simply with a different mode of expression) or whether they consider themselves to have no common concerns. There is an allusion to this contrast in a poem by Brereton addressed to a female friend, which describes, “The Behns, the Manleys, head this motley train, Politely lewd and wittily profane.” But the poem, while critiquing the mode of expression, is reticent about whether the subject matter had common inspiration.
Also unknowable is whether the absence of explicitly erotic content in an authors work corresponds to an absence of genital activity in her relationships with women. The remainder of the article consist of close readings of several poems that follow within the “passionate friendship” genre. This poetry of intensely intimate female friendship developed the vocabulary and motives that would underlie the development of “romantic friendship” as an important theme in the later 18th century and onward.
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Monday, May 16, 2022 - 07:21
One of the most fraught endeavors of literary analysis is the attempt to suss out the gender of an anonymous or pseudonymous author. Everything we assume, believe, and project about gendered writing gets applied in ways that cannot help but confirm our biases, absent a "reveal" from the living author, or from previously unknown evidence. (A notorious example from the world of science fiction and fantasy is when author Robert Silverberg published the opinion that pseudonymous author James Tiptree must be a man, because the writing style was "ineluctably masculine", only to have Alice B. Sheldon revealed as the author behind the name.)
When examining texts of the early modern period, there are the competing dynamics that men were far more likely to gain publication than women, but on the other hand, women were under much higher pressure to publish in a form that concealed their identity. To what extent can the quest for author identity rely on gender clues in the subject matter or point of view? Is it reasonable to conclude that a polemic attacking misogyny stands a better than average chance of having been written by a woman? And does that matter in how we interpret the content of the text, apart of questions of the social history of authorship?
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LHMPFull citation:
Wayne, Valerie. 1999. “The Dearth of the Author: Anonymity’s Allies and Swetnam the Woman-hater” in Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women’s Alliances in Early Modern England edited by Susan Frye & Karen Robertson. Oxford University Press, New York. ISBN 0-19-511735-2
Wayne, Valerie. “The Dearth of the Author”
[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]
One of the most fraught endeavors of literary analysis is the attempt to suss out the gender of an anonymous or pseudonymous author. Everything we assume, believe, and project about gendered writing gets applied in ways that cannot help but confirm our biases, absent a "reveal" from the living author, or from previously unknown evidence. (A notorious example from the world of science fiction and fantasy is when author Robert Silverberg published the opinion that pseudonymous author James Tiptree must be a man, because the writing style was "ineluctably masculine", only to have Alice B. Sheldon revealed as the author behind the name.)
When examining texts of the early modern period, there are the competing dynamics that men were far more likely to gain publication than women, but on the other hand, women were under much higher pressure to publish in a form that concealed their identity. To what extent can the quest for author identity rely on gender clues in the subject matter or point of view? Is it reasonable to conclude that a polemic attacking misogyny stands a better than average chance of having been written by a woman? And does that matter in how we interpret the content of the text, apart of questions of the social history of authorship?
# # #
The article starts off the section of the collection titled "Emerging Alliances".
This article pokes at the problem of “anonymous” authorship of early modern works. Given that there were strong social pressures against women writing and publishing publicly under their own names, might it be reasonable to put more weight on the possibility of female authorship for “anonymous” works, especially when the views expressed are sympathetic to women’s position? The specific work under consideration is an early 17th c play Swetnam the Woman-hater Arraigned by Women, a direct challenge and response to the misogynistic work Arraignment of Lewd, Idles, Froward, and Unconstant Women by Joseph Swetnam. The play was preceded by three prose responses to Swetname, at least two of which are clearly pseudonymous authors (the attributed feminine names being clearly allegorical) with one considered to accurately identify the female author. Note that Swetnam originally published his work under an allegorical pseudonym too.
Wayne doesn’t take a direct position on the gender of the author, but addresses the general question of “gender indeterminacy” in authorship of the early modern period.
The play clearly takes down Swetnam and misogyny in general in its conclusion, but the question of female agency in doing so is muddled by the central figure of (male) Prince Lorenzo disguised as the (female) amazon Atalanta. (Compare the disguised-as-amazon motif in Sidney’s Arcadia.)
The article concludes that regardless of the gender of the play’s author, they operate as an “ally” to women (in the play and generally). The article is fascinating and worth a read, but not directly pertinent to the Project except in how it depicts the range of possible attitudes of the time to feminist issues.
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Sunday, May 15, 2022 - 07:39
There is a long association of women-run girls's schools with homosocial bonding (among both students and faculty) that often shades over into romance. Although this article isn't examining the romantic potential of Mary Ward's organization, there are some interesting symbolic parallels in the "closeted" nature of their work in 17th c England as a Catholic organization.
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LHMPFull citation:
Gallagher, Lowell. 1999. “Mary Ward’s ‘Jesuitresses’ and the Construction of a Typological Community” in Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women’s Alliances in Early Modern England edited by Susan Frye & Karen Robertson. Oxford University Press, New York. ISBN 0-19-511735-2
Gallagher, Lowell. “Mary Ward’s ‘Jesuitresses’ and the Construction of a Typological Community”
This article looks at the women’s religious educational communities founded in the early 17th century by Mary Ward, the School of Blessed Mary. As an English woman setting up Catholic institutions during a period when Catholicism was out of favor in England, and as a woman becoming a prominent religious leader in the Catholic Church at a time when women were not encouraged to take leadership positions, the hierarchies of both sides found Mary Ward problematic.
Part of the focus of the authorities’ objections to Ward’s communities were their focus on the education of girls, aiming for a broad liberal education more traditionally associated with men, as well as traditionally feminine skills relevant to household management. Ward’s female-organized institutions were self-governing, electing their leaders internally and answerable only directly to the pope. (A structure set up with papal approval.) This set them in contrast with the usual model for female religious orders, which put them under local episcopal authority. Despite modeling her institution on existing religious communities, in particular the Jesuits, Ward’s schools were specifically not religious orders, neither maintaining the cloistered life nor adopting a religious habit.
In England the risk of official persecution led to practices of integrating into the fabric of society rather than standing out as an identifiable religious group. Teachers might live in the households of their students, or find Protestant patrons and protectors. Ward’s schools and teachers were often highly mobile to avoid trouble, but this very free mobility, and living within secular society, was part of what annoyed the Catholic establishment. Teachers might adopt the appearance of a variety of classes, moving between the clothing and habits of working class women and more elite women as it suited their needs.
Both Catholic and Protestant leaders were disturbed by the reputation Ward’s institution had for encouraging women to engage in public preaching and to hold opinions in matters of conscience. Though fairly conventional and orthodox in her religious opinions, Ward’s institution was clearly feminist and its approach and in its goals of making women equal in intellectual fields.
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Saturday, May 14, 2022 - 11:37
OK, this time I'm aiming for the "brief summary" approach. This is hard.
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LHMPFull citation:
Gim, Lisa. 1999. “’Faire Eliza’s Chaine’: Two Female Writers’ Literary Links to Queen Elizabeth I” in Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women’s Alliances in Early Modern England edited by Susan Frye & Karen Robertson. Oxford University Press, New York. ISBN 0-19-511735-2
Gim, Lisa. “’Faire Eliza’s Chaine’: Two Female Writers’ Literary Links to Queen Elizabeth I”
This article looks at the difficulties of viewing Queen Elizabeth as an example of female lives, and the ways in which she was treated as both an anomaly and as the epitome of female accomplishment by her contemporaries and near contemporaries. The article looks at two 17th century texts written by women that used Elizabeth as the focus of arguments in favor of women’s education. The author points out that women, more often than men, held up Elizabeth as a model for other women, as opposed to viewing her as an isolated exception, or as being essentially masculine in her accomplishments.
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Friday, May 13, 2022 - 16:31
OK, so honestly? When I decide to "blog the whole thing" for some of these collections, it may be hard to see the relevance to the Project, as such. And the real answer is that I like symmetry and follow-through. So if I've decided to "blog the whole collection" I prefer not to change my mind in the middle, even if -- in retrospect -- I probably should have just stuck to the two papers of obvious relevance. Another part of this is that it's hard to do anything between a one-sentence topic statement and a more detailed content summary. (Although there have been times when I've jotted down dozens of post-it notes as I read and then later decided to edit it down to that one or two sentences.)
And yet, I do believe there's a value for authors who want to write sapphic historical fiction in knowing the patterns of women's lives in general. Especially the patterns of how women interacted with women. Would your character have sewn samplers as a girl? (And save me from the stereotype of heroines who have to prove they're "not like other girls" by hating sewing.) Who would she have learned from? Who might her fellow learners have been? What might they have talked about while practicing their stitches? Parallel work is always a good time for sharing secrets and desires. All sorts of hidden messages were stitched into the designs of samplers. Fictional inspiration can be found everywhere!
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LHMPFull citation:
Frye, Susan. 1999. “Sewing Connections: Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Stuart, ELizabeth Talbot, and Seventeenth-Century Anonymous Needleworkers” in Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women’s Alliances in Early Modern England edited by Susan Frye & Karen Robertson. Oxford University Press, New York. ISBN 0-19-511735-2
Frye, Susan. “Sewing Connections”
In the 16th and 17th centuries, needlework was a strongly associated with the category of “woman” as well as being a significant marker of class in how it was created, used, and imitated. The motifs – both on large and small scale – provided a symbolic vocabulary to express multiple layers of meaning and offered a means of expressing identity, community, and subversion, as well as the more obvious symbolism of the designs. Elite embroiderers might have access to professional designers, but printed design books were becoming more general and patterns were shared within communities.
Because the symbolic language embedded in needlework was intended for public display, it was a medium through which women’s alliances could be claimed and advertised. This article looks at several prominent upper-class embroiderers of the 16th century and how such meetings to peer in their work, as well as more humble anonymous work of the 17th century.
New Year’s gifts from the young Elizabeth Tudor to her father the king and to queen Katherine Parr included embroidery-covered bound books of her own multilingual translations of religious and philosophical works meaningful to the recipients. The gifts thus demonstrated her scholarly accomplishments, her physical accomplishments, and her support of the recipients’ religious positions.
But her gifts to Parr had an additional purpose to express a filial bond to her stepmother and to emphasize their common interests, as women and especially as learned women. The texts she chose for the gift emphasized female authors and Elizabeth’s connection – both familial and symbolic – two female antecedents that connected her to Parr. As Elizabeth lived in Parr’s household after Henry’s death, this alliance was especially significant to her security, both were good and ill.
The second example involves the relationship between Mary Queen of Scots and the Countess of Shrewsbury during the period when the Shrewsburys were Mary’s keepers during her imprisonment in exile in England. The two had opposing political goals but close contact produced – among other things – joint needlework projects in which their differences were on display.
Mary’s needlework revolved around emblems representing her identity as a queen (and former queen of France), her claim to Scotland, as well as her status as heir to England, and the circumstances of her exile. Some of these messages were so pointed that an embroidered cushion given as a gift to a supporter was later entered into evidence at that supporter’s trial for treason.
Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury – more familiar to needlework aficionados as Bess of Hardwick, similarly expressed her own identity and ambitions. Three marriages of increasing rank expanded the ountess’s domestic connections and ambitions. These were symbolized in the embroideries she created to embellish furnishings depicting strong mythic female figures such as Diana, Penelope, and Lucretia. Elizabeth did not perform all the work herself, but directed the design and participated in the creation.
Samplers constituted a different level of needlework than the gifts and furnishings discussed above. In theory, a sampler served both as a pattern reference and as an advertisement of the maker’s domestic skills. As student work, they represented the connection between teacher and student – both women by default. The materials and execution of the sampler indicated status and personal skill. Repeating motifs and designs indicate the sharing of patterns among families. But there was also personal expression in the choice of scenes to illustrate, typically focusing on female biblical figures representing some virtue.
This paper feels somewhat cobbled together of disparate parts without a clearly sense of a central thesis. I think it can be be summed up as “Needlework was done by women. Needlework allowed for personal expression in the choice of motifs. That choice inherently communicated messages about the identity and image women wanted to show to the world.”
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Thursday, May 12, 2022 - 16:16
For those of us of a Certain Age, who grew up in a Certain Cultural Context, there is a birthday that comes with a default soundtrack.
When I get older losing my hair, many years from now
Some sentiments in the song mark the point of view as strongly gendered—and gendered within certain specific cultural expectations.
Will you still need me?
The speaker assumes that the value they provide will eventually decline—
Will you still feed me?
--while the listener is not granted the respite of age. Nuturing and service are expected to continue.
If I’d been out till quarter to three, would you lock the door?
And only the speaker is framed as socializing freely outside the home, with the expectation that this will be tolerated. The queries and images assume a highly specific life script.
Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear; we shall scrimp and save. Grandchildren on your knee
Knowing the authors, this image of respectable working-class conventionality carries an inescapable edge of satire, but a kindly satire. And today—both in the British society that spawned it, and in my own American society—the image of an idyllic, relaxing retirement in which only a little scrimping and saving is necessary to enjoy a few pleasures is out of reach for too many. Retirement age creeps upward and the equivalent of a summer cottage on the Isle of Wight may be only a fantasy. Even for those of us with traditional retirement plans, nothing is certain.
You'll be older too, and if you say the word, I could stay with you
How many people still assume that they will find a relationship in which you can expect to grow old together? My parents, and both sets of my grandparents all celebrated 50th wedding anniversaries. As a lesbian, I always knew that the legal system would deny me even the theoretical possibility of achieving the same feat. But that paradigm was always what I measured my life against and found it wanting.
I can be handy, mending a fuse...I can knit a sweater by the fireside...Sunday [usually Saturday] mornings go for a ride...Doing the garden, digging the weeds
It’s a good life. Truly it is.
Who could ask for more?
Yes. Yes, sometimes I could.
Will you still need me?
I do, you know, want to be needed—or if not “needed”, at least valued. One of my persistent psychological failure modes is the belief that I must provide value to people in order to find social acceptance. It doesn’t matter how often people assure me it’s not the case, this is a fixed part of my personality and unlikely to change.
Will you still feed me?
Feeding takes a lot of different forms. Nutrition is far from the most important way we feed each other.
Send me a postcard, drop me a line stating point of view
I’m bad at the whole spontaneous casual communication thing. I remember, when I was much younger, coming near to having panic attacks at the thought of contacting someone out of the blue without a specific purpose “just to chat”. How did people do that? Social media makes it easier today (and I sometimes wonder how different my life would have been if the internet had existed when I was young), but throughout my life I’ve tended to drift away from people if there wasn’t a structural context that brought us together. It’s on me; it’s not other people’s job to telepathically determine that I’d like to keep in contact. And social media still defaults to passive consumption, rather than interaction, much of the time. I’ve always hoped that being a “content creator” would fulfill my part of the reaching process and inspire people to drop me a line (see previous comment about being valuable).
Yours sincerely, wasting away
But all in all, it’s a good life. And I’m not sure it would have been possible for me to take any road but the one I’m walking.
Mine for evermore
Birthdays can be a time for taking stock—for looking backward and forward. For asking those eternal questions.
Will you still need me? Will you still feed me?
(With apologies to John Lennon and Paul McCartney)
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ThinkingTuesday, May 10, 2022 - 08:09
Another paper that explores aspects of the informal--but vitally important--webs of connection between women in pre-modern societies in which they lacked formal power.
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LHMPFull citation:
Robertson, Karen. 1999. “Tracing Women’s Connections from a Letter by Elizabeth Ralegh” in Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women’s Alliances in Early Modern England edited by Susan Frye & Karen Robertson. Oxford University Press, New York. ISBN 0-19-511735-2
Robertson, Karen “Tracing Women’s Connections from a Letter by Elizabeth Ralegh”
This paper considers the difficulty of tracing female alliances, due to gender differences in the types of records created and preserved. Women’s bonds are less commonly traceable in formal documents than men’s. Women’s letters provide one source for connections, even though many are written to men. The letter under consideration was written by lady Ralegh after her husband’s conviction for treason. It has a list of female names as endorsers on the back, and identifying the signatories maps out an informal alliance network largely organized around kinship, especially women with experience with legal conflict rooted in inheritance and widowhood.
Lady Raleigh tries to salvage some economic protection for herself out of the treason verdict (which would have made Ralegh’s property forfeit to the crown). She argued that the property had been transferred to their son before the conviction, and so was exempt.
A one-time lady in waiting to Elizabeth, her secret marriage to Ralegh resulted in a break. So other support for her various legal difficulties was essential. The Tudor court aristocracy was complexly intermarried providing women with options to leverage when alliances were needed. Marriage and childbearing may have been the foundation of women’s power in that context, but the power came from how they employed those connections. Appeals may have been directed toward male gatekeepers, but support often came more from women’s peers who saw parallels to their own interests, especially in matters of inheritance and property rights. With Ralegh imprisoned and abandoned by former allies, the power in the marriage shifted to Lady Ralegh.
On Lady Ralegh’s letter of appeal to Robert Cecil, 19 women appear endorsing her position. The women did not sign the letter personally – their names were added by someone else, perhaps acting as an intermediary. The remainder of the paper works to identify how the endorsers were connected – socially or by family – to Lady Ralegh, as well as noting the difficulties in doing so due to the small pool of given names popular at the time and women’s surname changes on marriage.
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Monday, May 9, 2022 - 18:33
Back in the saddle, after inadvertently taking a month off. I'm not sure that this article convinced me of the comparability of ladies in waiting in Shakespeare's plays versus Queen Elizabeth's court. But it does provide a useful reminder that the personal household of a reigning queen provided a context for interesting forms of female power and influence -- as well as an environment where remaining unmarried (and having primary connections with other women) might be advantageous to one's status and success.
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LHMPFull citation:
Brown, Elizabeth A. 1999. “’Companion Me with My Mistress’: Cleopatra, Elizabeth I, and Their Waiting Women” in Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women’s Alliances in Early Modern England edited by Susan Frye & Karen Robertson. Oxford University Press, New York. ISBN 0-19-511735-2
Brown, Elizabeth A. “Companion Me with My Mistress”
[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]
I'm not sure that this article convinced me of the comparability of ladies in waiting in Shakespeare's plays versus Queen Elizabeth's court. But it does provide a useful reminder that the personal household of a reigning queen provided a context for interesting forms of female power and influence -- as well as an environment where remaining unmarried (and having primary connections with other women) might be advantageous to one's status and success.
# # #
Drama often draws on contemporary dynamics to depict historic stories, and in this article Brown uses the relationship between Queen Elizabeth I and her female courtiers to examine the depiction of Cleopatra’s court in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. And, given the focus of this collection, it particularly looks at the types of alliances within the court between a queen and her waiting women. Brown’s position is that these relations strengthened Elizabeth’s position and goals, while Cleopatra is depicted as weak in this department.
Elizabeth’s female courtiers had both practical and ceremonial duties, which notably included controlling access to the queen. Although they were technically forbidden from participating in politics, their position as gatekeepers made political involvement difficult to avoid. The senior female courtiers were a relatively stable group, including both married and unmarried individuals. (The “maids of honor” were more changeable, younger, and famously forbidden from marrying.) Many of these women were drawn from the extended network of Boleyn relatives including members of the Howard, Carey, and Knollys families.
The existence of the power of these positions is documented in how others commented on it: seeking support and favor from those close to the queen, who in turn worked to promote the interests of friends and relations. But Elizabeth also used this female “fence” as a way to distance herself from petitioners. There was less need to say no to someone’s face if she could simply decline to respond to the intermediary.
The female courtiers also provided an emotionally supportive circle for the queen who, in turn, often had strong emotional ties to them, not surprising as some of the ladies were part of her household from the time of her ascension to their deaths. Given both personal and familial ties, the queen’s women functioned to extend her “presence” more widely than one woman on her own could manage.
The representation of Cleopatra’s court, in Shakespeare’s play, gives the two waiting women Charmian and Iras similar functional roles to Elizabeth’s women—greatly expanded from the characters they are based on in Plutarch’s history--but they are depicted as isolated and connected only to the queen, without the extensive family connections that shaped the real-world court. The article goes into some detail of how Cleopatra’s women act and function. (Which I’m going to skip summarizing.)
In both cases, there is a tightly-knit relationship between the queen and her women, which is somewhat mutual despite the differences of status and control. It is an entirely different type of relationship than the queen has with her male courtiers. The author points to the contrast in connectedness for Cleopatra’s women, but I wonder if this is a fair comparison—given that they’re fictional characters for whom complex back-stories would only muddle the plot.
The relevance of this article to the Project lies in the contemplation of the woman-centered culture of Elizabeth’s private life (to the extent that she had one). Within such a context, a never-married woman such as Blanche Parry could achieve an influence and functional social status that ordinarily would come only through marriage. And emotional connections between the women of the court would not raise the same concerns regarding loyalty and influence that marriage sometimes did.
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Saturday, May 7, 2022 - 19:25
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 229 - On the Shelf for May 2022 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2022/05/07 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for May 2022.
May tends to be a special month for me. It’s my birthday month, which makes the other parts feel like they’re scheduled as part of the celebration. It’s when the International Medieval Congress is held, which is my regular connection with my secret identity as an academic. The congress will be all-virtual for the third year in a row, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve found that format to work so well for an international conference that they’re going to keep it.
May is a good month for science fiction and fantasy conventions, and this year I’m making my first venture to WisCon in Madison, Wisconsin. The convention has always focused on feminist and progressive themes and I’ve been meaning to go for quite some time with the primary stumbling block being my primary commitment to the Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, Michigan – it’s daunting to contemplate two separate trips across the country in the same month, and the two events aren’t scheduled closely enough to turn it into a single trip. Given the relatively small size of this podcast audience, there’s a low probability that the listeners I bump into at conventions won’t be people I already know, but if it happens that you’re at WisCon, or BayCon in July, or the Chicago Worldcon in August, I’d really love for you to introduce yourself and chat.
May is also when my garden really starts going. It being California, the roses have been going full speed for over a month now, which was perfect timing for lots of promotional posts for my novella “The Language of Roses,” which came out in April. I had a lot of fun finding blossoms that matched references in the book and posting them all over my social media. But May is when the edible garden starts coming in. I already have scallions and artichokes and the first radishes. Soon the berries will start coming ripe. The strawberries are here already, then raspberries and blackberries and blueberries and this year I’ve just put in some currants and gooseberries, which I should get at least a taste of. The tomatoes are still a ways off, but there are always the fresh herbs and citrus fruits year-round. Growing things makes me happy, and growing things to eat gives me a special connection with the world, even though I have no ambition or ability to supply a substantial part of my own table.
May is also the month when I can start counting on the weather being good enough to eat outdoors regularly. So imagine me sitting on the stone bench under the grape arbor, surrounded by orange and lemon trees, listening to the play of the fountain, and digging into one of the fabulous novels that are coming out faster than I can keep up with.
So all in all, May is a great month for feeling like the world is conspiring for a birthday celebration. And if you’ve ever wondered what a podcast host would love to receive as a birthday present, the answer is always: spread the word about the show. I love it every time I see people I don’t even know recommending the show to someone on social media, or posting links to an episode to contribute to a conversation. And another great present is to post a review on a podcast app. Apple podcasts is a convenient metric for buzz about a show and the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast has only one lonely little review at that site. If you’ve ever wanted to feel like you’re wielding disproportionate social power, boost a podcast!
LHMP Fiction Series
Looking ahead, it may feel a bit early to start cheerleading for next year’s fiction series, but since I’ve already made a firm commitment to continue the series next year, no reason not to. I don’t have a new page of submission information up yet, but expect the requirements to be functionally identical to this year’s requirements, which are still posted. Sometimes the best story ideas lie fallow because you have no idea where you’d publish that story. Think about us, if it fits the theme!
Publications on the Blog
While April was full of many things, what it wasn’t full of was reading articles for the blog. So I still have the second half of Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens to finish up. I guess, in retrospect, I needed a little vacation.
Book Shopping!
Regardless of the amount of reading I’ve done, there’s always shopping! I did pick up a couple new publications to add to the list. The Cambridge Companion to Lesbian Literature, edited by Jodie Medd is a collection of studies looking at different aspects of material that can reasonably be classified as “lesbian literature” across time. About half of the material focuses on the 20th century, when works that self-consciously identify as “lesbian” start appearing, but a quarter of the book focuses on pre-20th century literature, with the rest addressing more general theoretical issues, such as the question of what we mean when we call a work “lesbian.”
The other new book falls between my personal interests in 17th century history and the Project’s interest in deep background research on contexts for women’s independence from marriage. Ingenious Trade: Women and Work in Seventeenth-Century London by Laura Gowing digs into archives and records to trace the lives of female apprentices, and especially of those apprenticed to women. An apprenticeship in the 17th century could not reasonably be called an “independent life” in the sense a modern woman would recognize, but it provided a door to at least a little economic power, and the combination of household and business formed when an established businesswoman took on female apprentices provides yet another model for imagining storylines that don’t make heterosexual marriage the center of women’s lives.
Recent Lesbian Historical Fiction
And speaking of imagined storylines, let’s look at the new and recent books! We have one April book to catch up on and 6 books coming out in May. (Looking ahead to June, I already have 14 books on the list. Possibly a Pride Month effect? Who knows.)
Fractures and Hinges by Edith Zeitlberger from Launch Point Press has the fascinating setting of Vienna at the turn of the 20th century.
It is the year 1903 and Eleanor, the Duchess of Darnsworth, is the envy of many—a beautiful and sophisticated woman, happily married mother of three, well-respected lady of society and an accomplished horse-breeder. But beneath the perfect surface lurks the memory of a tragic loss that haunts Eleanor’s every waking moment. On a visit to Vienna, she encounters the independent-minded and strong-willed Countess Sophie von Hagendorf, who, with her academic pursuits and unconventional lifestyle, has chosen to break through the rigid confines society has set out for her. She, too, has had to create a façade towards the world as loss and a fateful accident have left their scars. Sophie’s brusque manners both exasperate and intrigue the Duchess, but with closer acquaintance, the two women discover a sympathy beyond anything expected and the prospect of a love that could redeem them both…but can they forge a relationship in European society?
I’m trusting the tags and keywords for The Dance Tree by Kiran Millwood Hargrave from Picador. Very much as for the previous book of hers that I read, The Mercies, the book’s cover copy makes no overt reference to sapphic content, and the advance reviews feel like they’re being deliberately coy and treating any sapphic content as if it were a spoiler. But people’s tags definitely hint that it’s there, and The Mercies definitely had a strong sapphic theme, though I suspect that The Dance Tree will be similarly emotionally fraught and definitely not a capital-R romance by any means.
In Strasbourg, in the boiling hot summer of 1518, a plague strikes the women of the city. First it is just one – a lone figure, dancing in the main square – but she is joined by more and more and the city authorities declare an emergency. Musicians will be brought in. The devil will be danced out of these women. Just beyond the city’s limits, pregnant Lisbet lives with her mother-in-law and husband, tending the bees that are their livelihood. Her best friend Ida visits regularly and Lisbet is so looking forward to sharing life and motherhood with her. And then, just as the first woman begins to dance in the city, Lisbet’s sister-in-law Nethe returns from six years’ penance in the mountains for an unknown crime. No one – not even Ida – will tell Lisbet what Nethe did all those years ago, and Nethe herself will not speak a word about it. It is the beginning of a few weeks that will change everything for Lisbet – her understanding of what it is to love and be loved, and her determination to survive at all costs for the baby she is carrying. Lisbet and Nethe and Ida soon find themselves pushing at the boundaries of their existence – but they’re dancing to a dangerous tune.
I often comment on the frequency of cross-time stories where the historic storyline runs in parallel with, and is connected to, a contemporary character who is discovering that history. Don't You Dare: Uncovering Lost Love self-published by Gayla Turner puts a slightly different twist on this sub-genre by having the author stand in for the contemporary character. (Although I’ll point out that historic research contradicts the claim in the opening line of the blurb that newspapers a century ago never mentioned LGBTQ people.)
"Don't You Dare" … weaves together a current-day journey of discovery and a true-life love story between two women that took place over a hundred years ago. Newspaper headlines and stories back then didn't mention LGBTQ people. The LGBTQ community loved and lived in the background of society because it was too dangerous to do otherwise. All were hidden, just like the wedding photos belonging to author Gayla Turner's grandmother – Ruby. This … book begins with the discovery of these hidden wedding photos dated June 8, 1915. As these photos unveiled an awe-inspiring secret, Gayla Turner embarked on a seven-year journey to find out more about her grandmother and the woman standing next to her dressed as the groom. Curiosity led to extensive research that uncovered a love story between Ruby and the mystery woman in the photos. The author also uncovered a secret lesbian social club that was formed in the early 1900s by a local businesswoman. Women from as far away as Chicago traveled by train to the little farm town of Amherst, Wisconsin, to attend her exclusive parties. The local town people thought Cora held private tea and card parties so single young ladies could talk about how to find a husband. Little did they know, finding a man was not a subject of their conversations.
The Wicked and the Willing by Lianyu Tan from Shattered Scepter Press continues the author’s exploration of erotic horror in historic settings.
1927, colonial Singapore. Monsters don’t scare Gean Choo. And there are monsters aplenty among the Europeans on sultry Singapore island, all of them running away from something—or someone. When she starts her new job as a lady’s companion, she can’t imagine falling for the impassioned, demanding mistress of Ambrosia Hall, nor the gruff, brooding woman who serves as her lady’s majordomo. The latter holds her heart; the former, her body, blood, and loyalty. Both want her. Both need her. And one of them will die for her.
Nghi Vo previously layered fantasy and the Asian immigrant experience over a retelling an American classic in The Chosen and the Beautiful. Many of the same elements are present in her new book, Siren Queen from Tor.com, inspired by the experiences of Chinese-American actresses in early Hollywood.
"No maids, no funny talking, no fainting flowers." Luli Wei is beautiful, talented, and desperate to be a star. Coming of age in pre-Code Hollywood, she knows how dangerous the movie business is and how limited the roles are for a Chinese American girl from Hungarian Hill―but she doesn't care. She’d rather play a monster than a maid. But in Luli's world, the worst monsters in Hollywood are not the ones on screen. The studios want to own everything from her face to her name to the women she loves, and they run on a system of bargains made in blood and ancient magic, powered by the endless sacrifice of unlucky starlets like her. For those who do survive to earn their fame, success comes with a steep price. Luli is willing to do whatever it takes―even if that means becoming the monster herself.
Based on some early reviews, I’ll suggest that readers might want to check out content advisories for That Green Eyed Girl by Julie Owen Moylan from Penguin. It appears to involve some difficult themes.
1955: In a cramped apartment on the Lower East Side, school teachers Dovie and Gillian live as lodgers, unable to reveal the truth about their relationship. They guard their private lives fiercely - until someone guesses their secret. 1975: Twenty years on, in the same apartment, Ava Winters is desperately trying to conceal her mother's fragile mental state from the critical eyes of their neighbours. But, one sweltering July morning, Ava's mother escapes. Alone after her mother's departure, Ava takes delivery of a parcel. The box is addressed only to 'Apartment 3B', and contains a photograph of a woman with the word 'LIAR' scrawled across her face. Seeking refuge from her own crisis, Ava determines to track the owner of the photograph down. And, in so doing, discovers a shocking chain of kindnesses, lies and betrayals - with one woman at the centre of it all...
The themes of teachers and the era of closeted relationships also appear in The Teachers' Room by Lydia Stryk from Bywater Books.
The year is 1963, and even though the times they are a-changin', the timeworn ways of the past still hold their suffocating grip. Karen Murphy, fresh from college, takes on her first teaching job in a small Midwestern town. Despite her best efforts, she can't seem to stick to the subjects in her school books, helped along by the antics of a girl who upends all her lesson plans. Karen has a lot to learn about the teaching profession, and her female colleagues are there every step of the way to offer their advice, especially the enigmatic fourth-grade teacher, Esther Jonas. As Karen soon discovers, the idea of the devoted spinster teacher with no life beyond her classroom is a myth―the school is teeming with hidden passions and illicit stories stretching far beyond the classroom, her own explosive passion for Esther Jonas, included. As the two women begin to carve out a secret life together, a shocking betrayal rocks her world, putting everything she holds dear in jeopardy.
It's always interesting when coincidence creates themes among the books released in a given month. Have you ever noticed that sort of clustering of similar books coming out at the same time, when there’s no way it could have happened deliberately?
What Am I Reading?
And what am I reading? I mentioned earlier that I seem to have taken an inadvertent non-fiction vacation in April, but that definitely wasn’t the case on the fiction side. On the page, I finished The Company Daughters by Samantha Rajaram. While I definitely hadn’t been expecting a capital-R Romance, I wasn’t quite expecting the direction it ended up taking. Definitely a sapphic book, but more along the lines of Portrait of a Woman on Fire in its resolution. I quickly devoured T. Kingfisher’s fantasy romantic adventure Swordheart and am looking forward to the promised sequels to it. I started on Kate Bloomfield’s historic romance Passing as Elias involving a woman cross-dressing for a career as an apothecary. The cover copy had intrigued me enough to buy the book when I first encountered it, but the writing style ended up not working for me well enough to finish it.
Following my recent pattern, I’ve been binging audiobooks of various genres. I came up to date with Sherry Thomas’s Lady Sherlock series with books 5 and 6 in the series: Murder on Cold Street and Miss Moriarty, I Presume? Unlike book 4, no queer content in these, alas.
I don’t tend to pick my reading based on what other people are raving about—my tastes tend to be too idiosyncratic for that to work well—but I did pick up The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, I think because it was part of an Audible sale. Wow, this book. It would have been an interesting enough story even if it were just a chronicle of the life of a closeted bisexual actress in Hollywood, but the story lays out a trail of clues for a hidden but intertwined story that provides a powerful twist at the end.
For something completely different, I listened to Kate Elliott’s mil-sci-fi space opera Unconquerable Sun, which she pitches as a gender-flipped queer Alexander the Great in space. If you like lots of casual queerness in your space opera, this may be your jam. While I admire Elliott’s writing and have loved some of her other books, I find that space opera focusing on lots of technical details of ships and battles just isn’t my thing. Great characters but…I guess this is what drives some fans to write coffee shop AUs. I want to spend more time with the characters, just not when they’re fighting battles.
Because my to-read list is so long, sometimes I’ll pick just one book in a series to sample, and in the case of C.L. Polk’s Kingston Cycle—which might reasonably be described as “alternate-England Downton Abbey with magic and lots of politics”—I picked book #2 as my sample because that was the one advertised as involving a sapphic romance. My conclusion is that this series is not one that can be read piecemeal or out of order. While I was able to jump in and keep up, because that’s one of my reader super-powers, I doubt most people would have that experience. The romantic subplot was sweet and satisfying, but overall I’m not fond of plots that revolve around protagonists frantically running around thinking they have to save the world single-handed. So I’m not sure I’m going to circle back and pick up the other volumes.
I dunno. As time passes I find that I grow more opinionated about what I’m looking for in a good read, and I’m trying to give myself permission to filter out books that aren’t likely to hit the spot. And often it’s not that there’s anything wrong with the books, as such! It’s just that there are plots and characters and settings and prose styles that just aren’t my jam. And I wish that there were more book s that were both my jam and my peanut butter—where the structural elements of the book hit the spot and I could get the sapphic content I crave. Like: lately I’ve been indulging in my long-time love affair with historic mysteries, and what I want is an entire genre of historic mysteries that also have female same-sex romances. Please write them?
Author Guest
We finish up this month’s On the Shelf with an interview with Ursula Whitcher, the author of “The Spirits of Cabassus,” our most recent fiction episode.
[Interview transcript will be added when available.]
Show Notes
Your monthly roundup of history, news, and the field of sapphic historical fiction.
In this episode we talk about:
- The merry month of May
- Book shopping!
- The Cambridge Companion to Lesbian Literature edited by Jodie Medd
- Ingenious Trade: Women and Work in Seventeenth-Century London by Laura Gowing
- New and forthcoming fiction
- What I’ve been reading:
- The Company Daughters by Samantha Rajaram
- Passing as Elias by Kate Bloomfield
- Swordheart by T. Kingfisher
- Murder on Cold Street by Sherry Thomas
- Miss Moriarty, I Presume? by Sherry Thomas
- The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
- Stormsong (Kingston Cycle #2) by C.L. Polk
- Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott
- This month we interview Ursula Whitcher about her story in the previous episode.
- The inspirations for the story
- Writing disability in a historic context
- Braiding different interests into a single story
- Ursula’s previous fiction appearances on the LHMPodcast
- Huebner, Sabine R. & Christian Laes (eds). 2019. The Single Life in the Roman and Later Roman World. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 978-1-108-47017-9
- ”The Last Tutor” by Ursula Whitcher in Asimov’s Science Fiction May/June 2022
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
- Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
- Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
- RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
- Twitter: @LesbianMotif
- Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
- The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon
Links to Heather Online
- Website: http://alpennia.com
- Email: Heather Rose Jones
- Twitter: @heatherosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
Links to Ursula Whitcher Online
- Website: yarntheory.net
- Twitter: @superyarn
Major category:
LHMPPages
